Nikki Haley PAC off to solid start with $5.5 million in first six months
Nikki Haley raised nearly $5.5 million into a political action committee established in mid-January to boost Republican candidates in 2022 and expand her political operation as the former ambassador mulls a 2024 presidential bid.
At first blush, the money raised by Stand for America PAC through June 30 might appear modest. But considering the federal limits Haley’s “hard-dollar” PAC is subject to — the group is permitted to collect no more than $5,000 per individual per calendar year — a haul just short of $5.5 million suggests Haley is a strong fundraiser and political force in the GOP despite an unresolved feud with former President Donald Trump.
Stand for America PAC is due to deliver its first filing with the Federal Election Commission on Saturday. The Washington Examiner obtained a sneak preview of the group’s fundraising activity over its first nearly six months in existence. Haley’s PAC is a separate organization from the political nonprofit group she launched in 2019 under the same name. That group can accept contributions in unlimited amounts and does not have to disclose its donors.
Haley, governor of South Carolina for six years before Trump appointed her United States ambassador to the United Nations in 2017, has courted wealthy Republican financiers and appealed to grassroots donors who give in small amounts to raise money for Stand for America PAC. Since its mid-January launch, the group has received more than 89,000 donations and raised $3.8 million from grassroots contributors in all 50 states who gave an average of $42 each.
The remaining $1.7 million in donations came from major donors, among them some of the most prominent givers and bundlers in the party, including those who contributed to Trump’s 2020 campaign. A few have even hosted events for Haley’s PAC. On the list: Miriam Adelson, Doug Deason, Art Fisher, Saul Gamoran, Ken Griffin, Mindy Hildebrand, Charlie Johnson, and Bernie Marcus.
Adelson is the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson; Deason is a Texas businessman; Fisher, based in North Carolina, is active in social conservative causes; Gamoran, based in Seattle, was a bundler for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential bid; Griffin is a Chicago hedge fund manager; Hildebrand and Johnson were big Trump donors in 2020; Marcus is co-founder of the Home Depot.
The 2024 Republican presidential primary will not get underway in earnest for more than 18 months. But already, the competition is fierce, with potential contenders hitting key early primary states and crisscrossing the country to raise money for Republicans running in the midterm elections. Haley is not the only one to launch a PAC, a political nonprofit group, or both, as a platform for policymaking, politicking, and grassroots engagement.
But Haley, 49, has one of the more developed operations. She has used her political nonprofit as a platform for policymaking and grassroots engagement.
With her PAC, Haley is focused on boosting GOP efforts to recapture the House and Senate in 2022. This endeavor offers the ancillary benefit of enabling Haley to forge relationships across the party and across the country that will come in handy if she runs for president.
US Army forcing unvaccinated troops in Italy to wear masks outside; bans them from gyms, restaurants on base
The U.S. Army Garrison in Italy (USAG Italy) is now requiring all uniformed personnel who are unvaccinated against COVID-19 to wear masks on-base even when they’re outside. Unvaccinated troops are also banned from gyms or dine-in restaurants on base even if they do wear masks, the service confirmed to American Military News this week.
The new masking guidelines for U.S. Army posts in Italy were first revealed by an Instagram user last week. The Instagram account, Informedwithanthony, shared photos of an apparently leaked email distributed among USAG Italy personnel on July 16, which said “non-vaccinated personnel will wear a mask indoors and outdoors while on USAG Italy installations” and “are no longer authorized in any indoor Athletic facility (with or without a mask)” and are “not authorized to dine-in at any indoor dining facility” other than a base dining facility (DFAC).
A spokesperson for USAG Italy confirmed the policy to American Military News, stating that, “Uniformed personnel who are not vaccinated must wear masks indoors and outdoors on USAG-Italy installations. Uniformed personnel who are not vaccinated are not authorized to enter any indoor fitness center or athletic facility on post. Furthermore, they are not authorized to dine-in at any indoor restaurant, on post, except at an Army Dining Facility and must observe mask requirements that apply within the dining facility and maintain social distancing whenever possible.”
The leaked email shared by the Instagram account added that although the command would require unvaccinated personnel to wear masks even when outside, it would “acknowledge that this is counter to [host nation] directives.”
Italy officially lifted its own outdoor mask mandate in June. On the USAG Italy website under a section titled “COVID Mask Policy,” the command states, “The Italian health ministry issued an ordinance regarding the wear of a mask to cover mouth and nose throughout the country. Starting June 28, in white zone regions (all of Italy is currently white) masks are no longer required outdoors. The ordinance is valid until July 30. You still need a mask with you.”
It’s unclear why the mask policies listed on USAG Italy’s website have not been updated to reflect the new policy mandating masks for unvaccinated uniformed personnel outdoors.
When American Military News asked USAG Italy why the command would require masking outdoors for unvaccinated personnel if neither the U.S. nor Italy require it, a USAG Italy spokesperson said, “Commanders can make the rules more restrictive than host nation rules if the situation on the ground warrants, as has been done at installations around the military.”
Authoritarians Drunk on Power: It Is Time to Recalibrate the Government
It is time to recalibrate the government.
For years now, we have suffered the injustices, cruelties, corruption and abuse of an entrenched government bureaucracy that has no regard for the Constitution or the rights of the citizenry.
By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.
We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.
We have lingered too long in this strange twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law.
This COVID-19 pandemic has provided the government with the perfect excuse to lay claim to a long laundry list of terrifying lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level) that override the Constitution: the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die, and impose health mandates on large segments of the population.
These kinds of crises tend to bring out the authoritarian tendencies in government.
That’s no surprise: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.
So what we can do to wrest back control over a runaway government and an imperial presidency?
It won’t be easy.
We are the unwitting victims of a system so corrupt that those who stand up for the rule of law and aspire to transparency in government are in the minority. This corruption is so vast it spans all branches of government: from the power-hungry agencies under the executive branch and the corporate puppets within the legislative branch to a judiciary that is, more often than not, elitist and biased towards government entities and corporations.
The predators of the police state are wreaking havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government doesn’t listen to the citizenry, it refuses to abide by the Constitution, which is our rule of law, and it treats the citizenry as a source of funding and little else.
In other words, the American police state is alive and well and flourishing.
We have arrived at the dystopian future depicted in the 2005 film V for Vendetta, which is no future at all.
Set in the year 2020, V for Vendetta provides an eerie glimpse into a parallel universe in which a government-engineered virus wreaks havoc on the world. Capitalizing on the people’s fear, a totalitarian government comes to power that knows all, sees all, controls everything and promises safety and security above all.
Concentration camps (jails, private prisons and detention facilities) have been established to house political prisoners and others deemed to be enemies of the state. Executions of undesirables (extremists, troublemakers and the like) are common, while other enemies of the state are made to “disappear.” Populist uprisings and protests are met with extreme force. The television networks are controlled by the government with the purpose of perpetuating the regime. And most of the population is hooked into an entertainment mode and are clueless.
Sounds painfully familiar, doesn’t it?
In V for Vendetta, as in my new novel The Erik Blair Diaries, it takes an act of terrorism for the people to finally mobilize and stand up to the government’s tyranny: in Vendetta, V the film’s masked crusader blows up the seat of government, while in Erik Blair, freedom fighters plot to unmask the Deep State.
These acts of desperation and outright anarchy are what happens when a parasitical government muzzles the citizenry, fences them in, herds them, brands them, whips them into submission, forces them to ante up the sweat of their brows while giving them little in return, and then provides them with little to no outlet for voicing their discontent: people get desperate, citizens lose hope, and lawful, nonviolent resistance gives way to unlawful, violent resistance.
This way lies madness.
U.S. economy grew at a 6.5% rate last quarter, missing expectations
The U.S. economy grew at an annualized 6.5% rate last quarter, the government said Thursday — slower than the 8.4% economists expected.
Why it matters: It came as the economy made strides toward further reopening, vaccinations rolled out and government stimulus bolstered spending. But supply crunches held the pace of growth back.
Worth noting: The economy is bigger now than it was before the pandemic, officially recovering from its pandemic-induced plunge. (But output is still less than where it could have been, had there been no pandemic.)
‘Recipes for Regulatory Corruption’: How CDC, NIH Pull in Millions From Licensing Deals, Including COVID-Related Technologies
Aggregated data for fiscal year 2020 show the NIH and CDC collected a combined $63.4 million in royalty revenues under a business model that allows the NIH to grant technology licenses to the private sector.
With 27 different institutes and centers housed under the National Institutes of Health (NIH) umbrella — including the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — NIH is the largest biomedical research agency in the world.
Operating under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NIH currently wields a hefty annual budget of nearly $42 billion.
Within NIH, the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) plays a “strategic role” in supporting patenting and licensing for inventions that emerge from laboratories at the NIH and also Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In a win-win business model, the NIH routinely grants technology licenses (both exclusive and non-exclusive) to the private sector for use or commercialization of its inventions, with those licenses then driving billions of dollars in royalties back into NIH coffers.
In fiscal year (FY) 2020 alone — October 2019 through September 2020 — aggregated data for NIH and CDC show the agencies collected a neat $63.4 million in royalty revenues.
Under federal law, a portion of licensing royalties reverts to NIH to support undefined “mission-related activities.” Another portion goes directly to the agency’s inventors, who are allowed up to $150,000 in payments per calendar year. The same holds true at CDC.
Scientists like to frame these payments as “positive incentives,” but Children’s Health DefenseChairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. characterizes the royalty rules as “recipes for regulatory corruption.”
The gift that keeps on giving
Universities, too, receive royalties when they market patented technologies. Nearly 25 years ago, a University of Michigan biologist complained that two California universities (both public and private) were using royalties as a mechanism to covertly fleece taxpayers.
Citing a technology patented and licensed by the two universities, the professor explained that “ordinary people” had already paid through their tax dollars for the basic research that gave rise to the patents. He argued taxpayers should not have to continue paying the universities “many times over the original investment through patent royalties.”
The royalty monies flowing to NIH scientists have periodically attracted comparable public ire.
In 2005, an explosive Associated Press (AP) scoop showed large numbers of agency scientists — at the NIH’s explicit instruction — were routinely failing to disclose royalty payments, either to taxpayers or to participants in taxpayer-funded clinical trials who were obligingly testing out the NIH’s royalty-generating experimental treatments.
As AP pointed out, “Such research helps bring the treatment closer to possible commercial use, which could in turn bring the researchers and NIH higher royalties.”
Among the scientists scolded by AP for “testing products for which they secretly receive[d] royalties” was NIAID’s Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Even without royalties (which are classified as “federal compensation” rather than “outside income”), the long-time NIAID director — who describes himself as a humble “government worker” with a “government salary” — is the nation’s highest paid federal employee.
During the 2005 brouhaha, professing to be “extremely sensitive about the possibility of an appearance of a conflict of interest,” Fauci told the public he was donating his payments to charity.
Judging by a late-2020 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), there is still considerable room for improvement in terms of NIH transparency about NIH’s licensing activities.
The GAO noted NIH “does not report which of its patents are licensed or release metrics that would enable the public to evaluate how licensing affects patient access to resulting drugs.”
As one of its top two recommendations, the GAO urged NIH to provide “more information to the public” — in “an accessible and searchable format to the maximum extent possible” — to help citizens and policymakers understand licensing outcomes and impacts.
2020: Laying the groundwork for more historic highs?
“More public information” is conspicuously lacking in the OTT’s FY2020 annual report, which provides only one paragraph of specifics (and two paragraphs of boilerplate) in a short section on “Inventions and Agreements.”
In addition to noting the $63.4 million in FY2020 royalty revenues, the paragraph highlights a significant uptick in invention disclosures (up 20% over FY2019) and patent applications — 47% more applications filed compared to the previous year. (Invention disclosures are the first step in the patenting process.)
Elsewhere, technology transfer statistics show NIH executed more licenses in FY2020 (n=359) than in any prior fiscal year dating back to 1985 (when a mere 25 licenses were executed).
A few more COVID-specific details are available in the three-page portion of the GAO report focused on NIAID (pp. 22-25). There, we learn NIAID and its Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property Office (TTIPO) worked “diligently” and “as quickly as possible” in 2020 to facilitate worldwide “sharing” of NIAID-developed SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins and plasmids (molecules encoding the spike proteins) to spur development of COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments and vaccines.
These efforts resulted in:
- Ninety-six agreements with 75 academic organizations, nonprofit entities, government agencies, international organizations and other entities to furnish NIAID spike proteins or plasmids for research projects (called “material transfer agreements”)
- Twenty-one licenses negotiated with biotechnology or pharmaceutical companies, mostly for SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development — these licenses pertain to “most of the vaccines in advanced clinical trials and several currently in use around the world” (notably, the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine that received Emergency Use Authorization in Dec. 2020)
- An additional 16 agreements to collaborate on research, including four clinical trial agreements for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines
NIH royalty income reached a historic high of $147 million in FY2015. At that time, however, the agency accurately forecast declines beginning around FY2018 due to expiring patents on major products.
Given the COVID-related licensing groundwork laid in FY2020, it would not be surprising to see NIH’s royalties surge anew in FY2021.
Pfizer’s COVID vaccine collaborator, BioNTech, is already paying royalties for use of the NIH-developed spike protein technology. Moderna, which co-owns its COVID vaccine patents with NIAID, is not paying royalties.
CDC’s webpage listing technologies available for licensing (and, therefore, with the potential to generate royalties) has not been updated since May, 2020. At that time, the agency had about 60 technologies on offer, many related to diagnostics or vaccine development.
Whenever the CDC gets around to updating its list, it is likely the number of available technologies will be even higher.
Karen Fann Explains Path to Decertification of 2020 Election Results, Warrants for Maricopa County
Fann slammed State Senator Boyer for going “over to the dark side” and blocking progress on the audit.
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann has explained the path to issue warrants to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, and how to launch decertification of the 2020 election results.
Speaking to JT Harris on Conservative Circus, Fann expressed her frustration at Arizona State Senator Paul Boyer, who has “gone over to the dark side” and blocked efforts from the Senate to hold the Maricopa Board of Supervisors in contempt by voting against a resolution to do so. Fann seemingly agreed with President Trump’s assessment of the situation, who last week slammed Boyer for “doing everything in his power to hold up the damning Forensic Audit of Maricopa County which has been taking place over the last 90 days, saying he has been “nothing but trouble.”
Without Boyer’s vote for the resolution of contempt in the 16-14 split Senate, it is practically impossible for Fann to be able to issue warrants to the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, something she described as being “extremely frustrating.” If at any point those warrants were able to be issued, then the Board of Supervisors could be compelled to answer questions to the Senate, or immediately bring certain material. Without those warrants, the Senate can still issue subpoenas and hold hearings including testimony from people who may have seen “shenanigans” taking place in the election.
Fann also laid out the path to the decertification of the 2020 election results. She confirmed that she had no power to be decertify the election herself, and that any such move could only take place after a court had verified the results of the audit if they proved that the numbers from the election were incorrect. A simple majority vote in the House and Senate would then take place with a resolution to decertify, and it would be handed over to the state’s Attorney General to proceed from there.
She proceeded to highlight the problematic response from Maricopa County to the demands for routers used in the election, as they first claimed they could not hand them over for security reasons, and then said they didn’t use any at all. “We’ve gone full circle with them on that one,” Fann noted. Secretary of State Katie Hobbs had claimed that the voting machines couldn’t be used again in Maricopa because they couldn’t certify that the auditors hadn’t tampered with them. “Well if that’s the case, then how did the company certify the machines to begin with before the election?” she pointed out.
Fann further slammed the “liberal media” for “not reporting both sides” of the audit, claiming they are simply engaging in “spinning” their own narrative, rather than being interested in the truth. “We haven’t proven [fraud] yet,” Fann said, “[but] what we do know right now is that two and two is not adding up to four,” adding that Maricopa County would rather “play games via their Twitter account and try and cover up or make excuses for all the things that we found,” rather than work together to fix the situation. “I have to ask, what are they afraid of?” she queried.
Biden Forgets to Name Third Reason Why He Ran for Presidency, Claims He ‘Drove’ 18-Wheeler Once
The Democratic president is well known for his frequent gaffes, especially during off-the-cuff speeches, prompting his political rivals to raise questions about his mental capability to hold the nation’s highest post.
US President Joe Biden ran for president for three reasons, according to his own claim during a visit to a Mack Truck factory in Pennsylvania on 28 July. POTUS, however, only named two, leaving the third a mystery.
“When I announced my campaign […] I said I was running for three reasons. One, to restore the soul of this country, a sense of decency and honour. But secondly, to rebuild the backbone of the country: hard-working middle class folks who built this country”, Biden revealed.
The president then went on to praise the nation’s unions for “building” the American middle class and saying that without the United Auto Workers he wouldn’t have won his race for the Senate in 1972. He thus switched the topic from his third aspiration for the presidency and the Mack Truck workers in attendance didn’t seem to be bothered by this fact.
Nor were they concerned with Biden’s claim that he “used to drive an 18-wheeler”, even though there has been no account of POTUS ever doing that in his career.
When grilled by a Fox News reporter, a White House spokesperson first suggested that the president referred to his experience riding in a truck in 1973 on a long haul from Delaware to Ohio, even though he was not technically “driving” it. The spokesperson then went on to suggest that Biden might have referred to his experience driving a school bus as a summer job, even though school buses in the US rarely have six wheels let alone 18.
POTUS himself did not clarify, when exactly he “drove” a truck, as the major part of his career was spent in the US Senate. Before becoming a member of Congress, Biden worked at a law firm as a public defender and then as a member of the New Castle County Council.
Popular Worship Leader Ignites Furor For Heretic Tweet Saying ‘Buddha,’ ‘Muhammad’ And ‘You’ Are ‘Christ’
Thousands of people responded to a tweet by Michael Gungor, the lead singer of the famous band Gungor, on Friday, July 23. The post drew widespread criticism because it asserted that, although Jesus is the Christ, so are Buddha, Muhammad, people, and the church.
Several readers interpreted Michael Gungor’s tweet as a universalist statement. The text of Gungor’s tweet stated: “Jesus was Christ. Buddha was Christ. Muhammad was Christ. Christ is a word for the Universe seeing itself. You are Christ. We are the body of Christ.”
Gungor expressed gratitude for the kind responses to his tweet, writing, “Thanks for all the thoughtful replies everyone.”
Then, in support of what he tweeted, he suggested that everyone read Richard Rohr’s book “The Universal Christ” and listen to his Liturgists podcast, where he claims they discussed the topic in depth.
Jesus was Christ.
Buddha was Christ.
Muhammad was Christ.
Christ is a word for the Universe seeing itself.
You are Christ.
We are the body of Christ.— Michael Gungor (@michaelgungor) July 23, 2021
His counter-argument and “freedom to question things”
Happy that his post sparked so much discussion on what he meant by “Christ,” a subject he thinks is essential, the musician went live on Instagram to dissect his tweet in more detail and answer questions from fans.
“Christ is a word for the universe, seeing itself. You are Christ’s. We are the body of Christ,” he said in his Instagram Live video.
Following the “met with fury” reaction to his tweet, Gungor stated that although he was raised Christian, the “concept of Christ” and the meaning of the term “Christ” were not discussed in depth or on a consistent basis.
Thus, he believes that the book “The Universal Christ,” which he recommended people read in his tweet, is an excellent introduction to the topic.
Gungor then responded to those who claimed his tweet was “unorthodox to mainstream historical Christianity,” saying he’s “guilty as charged.”
But he went on to clarify that those accusations relating to historical mainstream Christianity don’t bother him in the least.
“For a number of reasons, historical mainstream Christianity is the force in the world that, (I’m not going to say it) doesn’t have any good or that it doesn’t have any worth. But it is the force in the world that is responsible for the Inquisition, Manifest Destiny, all sorts of colonialism and genocide, sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, ecological, violence, and countless other evils. I’m not too worried about being unorthodox to the power systems of Christianity, to be honest with you,” he said.
He went on to say that orthodoxy caused him to feel alienated from the body of Christ, but that he quickly discovered the “freedom to question things” and began “moving away from those things.”
“I’m not claiming that my take on what Christ is, is what most Christians have said,” he continued. “If you are concerned about that, you should call me a heretic, and I will accept your accusation.”
In response to the criticism that he was abusing the term “Christ,” Gungor stated that he is more interested in the “traditional use of the word Christ as a concept” rather than as “the last name of Jesus” or as a “political flag for our team.”
“I think it ought to mean something bigger. I think it ought to mean something universal for the sake, not only of individual practice. I think it makes the concept of Christ and the practice of this unity incredibly more powerful,” he said.
“I think it’s less violent to find the more broader universal understanding of the word Christ that doesn’t leave us in the seat of colonizers of culture, of ideas of religion, of spirituality, of metaphysical land like I was saying before,” he added.
As for comparing Christianity to other faiths such as Buddhism or Islam, Gungor said that he is not “flattening the important distinctions of other traditions,” but rather “honoring” the “specificity of the traditions.”
AZ Senator on Decertifying 2020 Election Results
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann explains the path to decertification of the 2020 presidential election results.
QUICK FACTS:
- J.T. Harris of Conservative Circus interviewed Sen. Karen Fann (R) about the Maricopa County audit.
- Fann rejected “false information” circulating about her having “the ability to decertify” electors.
- “I don’t have the power to do that,” she said.
- But Sen. Fann did explain that if it can be proved “that the numbers were not correct, if that’s what the audit shows, then it will go to court and the courts are going to have to adjudicate.”
- “That proof is going to have to be one-hundred-percent, six ways from Sunday,” she remarked.
PATH TO DECERTIFICATION:
- Sen. Fann explained that if there is fraud or not, “whether it was intentional [or] non-intentional…then the courts will say okay you’ve proven your case and we find that it is true.”
- “Then and only then at that case,” Sen. Fann went on to say, “what happens then, is that the House and the Senate, the Arizona House and Senate bodies, would have to put up a resolution on the board.”
- That resolution would then “take a simple majority that would quote, ‘decertify,’ and turn it over to the Attorney General’s Office for prosecution,” she said.
- Fann then explained “we need sixteen and thirty-one so, I got to get that sixteen vote in the Senate and we’ve got to make sure that Speaker Bowers has thirty-one votes over in the House.”
